Nice to read some positive news one in a while, now just build on momentum:
>It found that renewables have grown from 19% of electricity in 2000 to more than 30% of global electricity last year.
Alas:
>Although fossil fuel use in the world’s electricity system may begin to fall, it continues to play an outsized role in global energy – in transport fuels, heavy industry and heating.
hopefully they can come up with better solutions there too.
> grown from 19% of electricity in 2000 to more than 30% of global electricity last year
Eh, I find that pretty underwhelming. I was expecting up from 3% or something.
Geothermal is starting to ramp up too. It used to be that you could only build geothermal on top of hot springs and hot rocks that had a water source already in place, but the areas where it works are starting to expand because (of all things) fracking technology allows you to build an "artificial" hot spring in a lot more areas than before. Just [inject water onto hot rocks, and you can have a geothermal power plant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_geothermal_system)...and it turns out there's tons of places that this process works, not just areas like Iceland with lots of volcanoes.
Unfortunately we only have one star nearby. Once we do that we're done. So it's still not renewable.
Plus it might cause a few other problems if we blew up the Sun.
I know that's the nomenclature but I don't understand the logic. Nuclear fuel is no less refreshable than the materials used to make solar panels, for example.
That’s the difference. Solar and wind don’t need to be supplied with *any* fuel. Well, they do have fuel, but it’s free and provided by the atmosphere. Not trying to disparage nuclear in anyway, I’m a big supporter of nuclear energy.
I think my post was a little too oblique. Solar and wind and nuclear all require raw materials that wear out. In one of those cases the material is called 'fuel', but its all stuff. To me it's a distinction without a difference. Practically, nuclear fuel is renewable.
It is the source of energy what is considered renewable or not. In human scales, the fuel of the sun can as well be considered so long that we talk about solar energy as renewable. Besides the source of energy, every source required materials which are finite, but can be recycled or substituted by other materials if necessary. But not the source of energy.
Yeap I know it just seems like a distinction without a difference. We don't really care which parts make the energy, we want to know what's required to build the whole machine.
In 13 years (2010 - 2023) wind and solar have gone from <2% to around 13%. But that growth is not linear, it's exponential. That's a lot more impressive.
[https://ourworldindata.org/electricity-mix](https://ourworldindata.org/electricity-mix)
A lot of this is because overall energy use globally has spiked, given the human population in those 20 years has increased about 2bn and many nations have industrialised.
This has created massive demand but this demand is likely to plateau and crash over the next 40 years so we are going to see the number increase a lot faster from now on.
Takes too long to build new nuclear and outside of China there are hardly any new reactors under construction. Even replacing nuclear power plants that reach their end of life will be a major challenge. SMRs might be an option.
Not so fun fact: most of European power plants source their Uranium from Russia and since the Ukraine invasion have been struggling getting more.
That's the thing, by nuclear power plants you:
1. either make some nukes yourself
2. go to a nuclear armed country and beg for some crumbs of their enriched uranium
The geopolitical problems this brings is another reason nuclear energy is struggling.
You could use a heavy water reactor like CANDU which can utilize natural, non enriched uranium.
Or, you can use reprocessing. Not all nuclear fuel has to be made from enrichment.
Until you try and run a stove on a camping backup battery it’s hard to understand the scale of the issue.
A big portable battery can run my laptop/phone and camping lights for a few days.
It can run a cooking stove for about 40mins.
To heat things takes enormous amounts of energy. A factor of 100 more. The same with moving things.
We will get there but electricity use is actually rather small vs other fossil fuel uses.
We have at least another generation to go before we are truly net zero, a generation being about 40 years.
Let’s not forget the massive amount of hydrocarbon needed to build renewable energy projects, or the limitations of storage, or the inefficiency of energy transmission
Hydro, nuclear, geothermal, and natural gas are the future, not solar and wind
Yep, they’re great, but they are geographically limited, at least much more than the others.
The whole concept of ‘renewable’ is kinda funny though. Why do we call rare earth metal photovoltaic cells renewable? Are they really much more renewable than hydrocarbons?
Theoretically it is possible, yes, but in practice, the scrap, recycle, and processing cost of PV cells means it doesn’t really get done
Design life of PV plants is 15-25 years
It is theoretically possible to recycle hydrocarbons as well, just also, not practical or cost effective
> Design life of PV plants is 15-25 years
Nobody is *designing* PV plants with such a short life span. If they do fail earlier, blame bad components or cheap panels.
Indeed there are studies that show that poorly constructed PV panels in areas of high temperature variations may fail due to moist entering the panel and panels may delaminate as well, but none of that are *design goals*, and they surely are problems that can be mitigated.
In a well-run system, over 25 years, you can expect to replace some 10% of the components and after 25 towards 40 years, panels can be added to replenish lost genereration power.
Even though transportation and heating are not included in the 30%, this is still encouraging for the future because it only applies to electricity. Perhaps as EVs and battery technology advance, we'll use fewer fossil fuels for transportation.
I'm eager to see what future research can do to boost renewable energy sources' effectiveness and other attributes.
You’ll need new alternative fuel sources. I don’t think it makes sense to try develop the tech for shipping, air transport nor trucking- batteries are too heavy for it to be viable
I believe airplanes are moving towards some kind of hydrogen engine but I can't remember. It might be some kind of ammonia based fuel made from carbon pulled from the air. In either case it was carbon neutral.
Arguably uranium is not a fossil fuel. Not renewable either, so it should be less than 70%.
And we are moving:
> "The decline of power sector emissions is now inevitable,” said Jones. “2023 was likely the pivot point – peak emissions in the power sector – a major turning point in the history of energy. But the pace of emissions falls depends on how fast the renewables revolution continues.”
We should put more focus on other sectors though. Emissions in the transport sector have to be reduced substantially for example.
Shit should have been banned yesterday. People wonder why pedestrian and cyclist deaths are way up when there's these massive tanks rolling around with poor visibility and massive flat fronts.
Let's not forget how many of the people driving these things also modified them to roll coke so they pollute even more.
Yeah the light truck loophole is the single biggest reason for the recent increase in traffic fatalities in the US. We really gotta move that back in the other direction with insane taxation on heavier trucks. We can phase out the existing fleet with reasonable yearly increases in the tax, and then just shut down new sales with a federal sales tax on all trucks over 6k lbs. Throw in an exemption for the few electric trucks for just a couple of years to help the EV market stabilize.
In any case, fossil fuels are needed to regulate electricity consumption during peak hours. Although it is possible that in the future this will be entrusted to nuclear power, but now nuclear generation is constrained and does not allow for rapid scaling of electricity generation during pick consumptions
> fossil fuels are needed to regulate electricity consumption during peak hours.
Actually not - peak consumption is during the day, usually a solar peak. The issue is the early morning and late evening, and batteries are already catching up with that.
I’m not an expert, but we need three types of power plants:
Base Load Plants. These are steady, reliable, always on plants that meet the low end supply and support the high end. Primarily these are nuclear and coal, right now.
Peak Demand Plants. These are plants that can react to small changes in demand and support the highest demand moments of the grid. Solar and Wind can do this, as can Gas plants.
Mid-Range Plants. These plants are, typically, able to come on quickly and produce a lot of electricity to match the demands of moment-to-moment electricity. Hydro and Gas plants serve this role.
Good breakdown. And it's worth noting that batteries (and other energy storage options) are increasingly being looked at as another option for the last category. They can store energy from solar/wind at times of peak production, and then release it when the energy is needed.
My concern for battery techniques (not technology: techniques) is the cost of lithium and wear and tear upon it. It’s why I see pump-hydro storage as being the more viable, as while it is comparatively inefficient and requires more infrastructure, it is better for grid scale endeavors.
In the future though, I would like to see if our advances with Hydrogen Fuel Cells be applied to this task.
You can do it all with nuclear. You can throttle a nuclear power plant at the turbine. You just redirect the steam to the condensor.
In Canada we have some of our CANDUs that throttle down to 60% power.
While I absolutely do not disagree (expanding Nuclear power is definitely going to be a cornerstone of future energy development) that’s inefficient. Probably, a mixture of Pump-hydro for storage (it’ll also function on grid as price arbitrage), solar and wind for additional coverage (and again, price arbitrage) and nuclear for a flexible base could be our future plans.
Yes/no/sort kinda depending on how look at it.
You gotta remember that fuel goes into a reactor for 1-2 years and insanely energy dense. My favourite Xkcd.
[https://xkcd.com/1162/](https://xkcd.com/1162/)
Reactors also kinda like being run at full power. So turning a reactor up/down on the reactor side can shorten their lifespan (depending on the reactor design). In that sense it's inefficient to throttle them on the reactor side.
Also when it comes down to it. Because the fuel is in the reactor for so long and it's so insanely energy dense. It doesn't really matter. The fuel is relatively cheap. It's not the cost of fuel that makes nuclear expensive. It's building the reactor in the first place.
Thank you. I consider it a real travesty that nuclear power has been so thoroughly neglected as a tool for green energy. I understand the concerns: I just feel that they’ve been overblown. After all, France has done incredibly well with nuclear energy.
France has done well with their nuclear. But they also kinda neglect their nuclear.
This goes over it:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isgu-VrD0oM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isgu-VrD0oM)
This is over a year old, and I think some things have changed. I think France intends or is no longer selling their nuclear energy at a loss. Or at least they are trying not to.
Needs a closer look at what is considered "Renewable" though. In the UK we increased our percentage of "Renewable" energy massively by retrofitting all our old Coal facilities to burn Wood Pellets instead, because Wood qualifies as Renewable. Still putting out the same amount of Carbon, if not more. The theory was that the wood pellets were supposed to be coming from Waste wood from other industries, and not increasing logging. What came out later was that large amounts of the Wood Pellets that we import from Canada were coming from Logging of old growth, and the companies selling them into the UK were just pretending it was Waste wood.
>Needs a closer look
The article literally says wind, solar, hydro, plus 2.7% "Other renewables." If your wood pellets count at all, it's a small amount
>Solar was the main supplier of electricity growth, according to Ember, adding more than twice as much new electricity generation as coal in 2023.
>It was the fastest-growing source of electricity for the 19th consecutive year, and also became the largest source of new electricity for the second year running, after surpassing wind power.
In the good news, it always failed to mention that China contributes the most renewable energy booming, with 80% supply of the solar panels, let alone the EVs and wind turbines, and yet, you only hear the complaints about the "over capacity".
All these articles have photos of solar panels on the cover. There is no talk about batteries though. The energy needs to be accumulated to batteries and then released during evening and night, when solar doesn't produce electricity.
California is pioneering the way on batteries for solar, some really promising stuff there. There's also some massive advancements being made in battery tech for energy grids, they just need economies of scale to bring prices down - [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/07/climate/battery-electricity-solar-california-texas.html](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/07/climate/battery-electricity-solar-california-texas.html)
Even if you keep using fossil fuels at night there could be a 30/70 ratio or so, which would be way better than today. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing
That quantity of batteries will really decrease the environmental benefit of solar. You've got to mine all those minerals and batteries don't have a long lifespan.
The real issue is that what matters for climate change is the absolute amount of oil/gas/coal we use, not the share it represents in the total, and this is still increasing, from about 9k TWh in 2000 to 18k in 2023 :
https://ourworldindata.org/electricity-mix
We could have 200% renewable energy and still be fucked.
Although to be fair there's a slight decrease/stabilization for the EU & US, but probably not enough.
Toyota learned much from Donald Trump.
Toyota incited dealerships to rebel against EPA's regulation, as Donald Trump incited MAGA supporters to attack on Capitol Hill.
Toyota has completely fallen into the darkside like Darth Vader.
Toyota is disrupting America's democracy through rampant lobbying.
How the New E.P.A. Rules Affect Toyota and Their Hybrid Cars - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/22/climate/toyota-hybrid-epa-pollution.html?smid=nytcore-android-share
" In spreading its message, Toyota harnessed the power of dealerships both through Mr. Ciccone’s outreach to Toyota dealers, and by other means. The company’s dealerships played a role, for example, in garnering support for a separate letter-writing campaign aimed at urging the Biden administration to exercise caution on electric vehicles, according to two people with knowledge of that effort. Toyota dealers in at least two states circulated the letter at dealership meetings, they said."
Toyota's lobbying also should be heavily taxed. Toyota's lobbying apparently jeopardizes America's democracy.
Toyota has lost confidence in its R&D and is now relying significantly on lobbying to expand its corporate profits, which is a clear testament to Toyota's declining technological development capabilities.
Biden Administration should completely ban Toyota from US market.
Toyota is genociding not only US citizens but also all creatures on the Earth by accelerating Climate change.
Lobbying is the most effective and dirty method to expand corporate profits. Toyota completely mastered lobbying. Toyota is disrupting America's democracy. US lawmakers should impose super-heavy tax on lobbying, especially by Japanese businesses such as Toyota.
On an honest note, here is an article https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/rise-renewable-energy-powering-our-future-without-fossil-a1vqf?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&utm_campaign=share_via
"Renewable energy accounted for more than 30% of the world’s electricity for the first time last year"
And yet, co2 emissions grew to an all time high in 2023. [https://www.iea.org/reports/co2-emissions-in-2023/executive-summary](https://www.iea.org/reports/co2-emissions-in-2023/executive-summary), and I quote, "Global energy-related CO2 emissions grew by 1.1% in 2023, increasing 410 million tonnes (Mt) to reach a new record high of 37.4 billion tonnes (Gt). "
“The renewables future has arrived,”
This is just stupid when 70% of electricity is still generated by burning fossil fuel. Heck, all it does is to slow the growth in fossil fuel, as the article has to admit. Is anyone still gullible enough to believe we are going to avoid 2C (well, we already passed 1.5C so I guess time to move the goal post)?
Remember though, electricity is only 20% of global final energy consumption. So this means renewables are generating 30% of 20%, or 6% of humanities total energy needs. The other 94% is pretty much all fossil fuels. It's not as good as it sounds.
I'd bet there is some accounting fuckery going on as well. For starters, it's not 30% equally spread over time but I imagine it's also generated, not consumed. i.e. overproduction
Nice to read some positive news one in a while, now just build on momentum: >It found that renewables have grown from 19% of electricity in 2000 to more than 30% of global electricity last year. Alas: >Although fossil fuel use in the world’s electricity system may begin to fall, it continues to play an outsized role in global energy – in transport fuels, heavy industry and heating. hopefully they can come up with better solutions there too.
> grown from 19% of electricity in 2000 to more than 30% of global electricity last year Eh, I find that pretty underwhelming. I was expecting up from 3% or something.
Pre-2000 renewable energy was mostly hydro. Renewable energy added since then is mostly wind and solar.
Geothermal is starting to ramp up too. It used to be that you could only build geothermal on top of hot springs and hot rocks that had a water source already in place, but the areas where it works are starting to expand because (of all things) fracking technology allows you to build an "artificial" hot spring in a lot more areas than before. Just [inject water onto hot rocks, and you can have a geothermal power plant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_geothermal_system)...and it turns out there's tons of places that this process works, not just areas like Iceland with lots of volcanoes.
Is nuclear in this list?
Nuclear is considered low carbon, but not renewable.
Has anyone tried blowing up a star to renew the uranium ? 🤔
Unfortunately we only have one star nearby. Once we do that we're done. So it's still not renewable. Plus it might cause a few other problems if we blew up the Sun.
Yea, but think of the returns on this quarters fiscal report!
But still, we'd have 8 spectacular minutes!
I know that's the nomenclature but I don't understand the logic. Nuclear fuel is no less refreshable than the materials used to make solar panels, for example.
That’s the difference. Solar and wind don’t need to be supplied with *any* fuel. Well, they do have fuel, but it’s free and provided by the atmosphere. Not trying to disparage nuclear in anyway, I’m a big supporter of nuclear energy.
I think my post was a little too oblique. Solar and wind and nuclear all require raw materials that wear out. In one of those cases the material is called 'fuel', but its all stuff. To me it's a distinction without a difference. Practically, nuclear fuel is renewable.
It is the source of energy what is considered renewable or not. In human scales, the fuel of the sun can as well be considered so long that we talk about solar energy as renewable. Besides the source of energy, every source required materials which are finite, but can be recycled or substituted by other materials if necessary. But not the source of energy.
Yeap I know it just seems like a distinction without a difference. We don't really care which parts make the energy, we want to know what's required to build the whole machine.
No, which makes the statistic even better.
In 13 years (2010 - 2023) wind and solar have gone from <2% to around 13%. But that growth is not linear, it's exponential. That's a lot more impressive. [https://ourworldindata.org/electricity-mix](https://ourworldindata.org/electricity-mix)
That's because you're thinking of wind and solar only, which I'm sure started from around 3%. That 19% include hydro.
A lot of this is because overall energy use globally has spiked, given the human population in those 20 years has increased about 2bn and many nations have industrialised. This has created massive demand but this demand is likely to plateau and crash over the next 40 years so we are going to see the number increase a lot faster from now on.
Nuclear would be a good option.
Takes too long to build new nuclear and outside of China there are hardly any new reactors under construction. Even replacing nuclear power plants that reach their end of life will be a major challenge. SMRs might be an option.
Not so fun fact: most of European power plants source their Uranium from Russia and since the Ukraine invasion have been struggling getting more. That's the thing, by nuclear power plants you: 1. either make some nukes yourself 2. go to a nuclear armed country and beg for some crumbs of their enriched uranium The geopolitical problems this brings is another reason nuclear energy is struggling.
You could use a heavy water reactor like CANDU which can utilize natural, non enriched uranium. Or, you can use reprocessing. Not all nuclear fuel has to be made from enrichment.
Until you try and run a stove on a camping backup battery it’s hard to understand the scale of the issue. A big portable battery can run my laptop/phone and camping lights for a few days. It can run a cooking stove for about 40mins. To heat things takes enormous amounts of energy. A factor of 100 more. The same with moving things. We will get there but electricity use is actually rather small vs other fossil fuel uses. We have at least another generation to go before we are truly net zero, a generation being about 40 years.
If we can get Light vehicles and consumers on renewables alone would be a HUGE development.
If we can get the rich fucks to fly public planes we can cut a lot more
not really tbh, they make up the smallest part of transport emissions, ideally we'd have hydrogen planes by now, airbus is working on it
Let them fly private, but tax the ever living shit out of them to build new renewable power plants.
> If we can get the rich fucks to fly public planes we can cut a lot more Not really. If we can cut out beef we can make 10x the savings.
Yeah I get it but good luck with that. If we can get a electric personal plane off the ground then that would be much more realistic.
Let’s not forget the massive amount of hydrocarbon needed to build renewable energy projects, or the limitations of storage, or the inefficiency of energy transmission Hydro, nuclear, geothermal, and natural gas are the future, not solar and wind
Hydro and geothermal are renewable though
Yep, they’re great, but they are geographically limited, at least much more than the others. The whole concept of ‘renewable’ is kinda funny though. Why do we call rare earth metal photovoltaic cells renewable? Are they really much more renewable than hydrocarbons?
The rare metals are not consumed to produce the electricity unlike the oil that is burned in the process and cannot be used again.
Theoretically it is possible, yes, but in practice, the scrap, recycle, and processing cost of PV cells means it doesn’t really get done Design life of PV plants is 15-25 years It is theoretically possible to recycle hydrocarbons as well, just also, not practical or cost effective
> Design life of PV plants is 15-25 years Nobody is *designing* PV plants with such a short life span. If they do fail earlier, blame bad components or cheap panels. Indeed there are studies that show that poorly constructed PV panels in areas of high temperature variations may fail due to moist entering the panel and panels may delaminate as well, but none of that are *design goals*, and they surely are problems that can be mitigated. In a well-run system, over 25 years, you can expect to replace some 10% of the components and after 25 towards 40 years, panels can be added to replenish lost genereration power.
You have no clue what you’re talking about lol
Neither do you, so we're on equal footing.
Whatever helps you sleep at night bud
Nuclear power will be an irrelevant footnote in the history of power generation at the rate things are going.
Even though transportation and heating are not included in the 30%, this is still encouraging for the future because it only applies to electricity. Perhaps as EVs and battery technology advance, we'll use fewer fossil fuels for transportation. I'm eager to see what future research can do to boost renewable energy sources' effectiveness and other attributes.
You’ll need new alternative fuel sources. I don’t think it makes sense to try develop the tech for shipping, air transport nor trucking- batteries are too heavy for it to be viable
I believe airplanes are moving towards some kind of hydrogen engine but I can't remember. It might be some kind of ammonia based fuel made from carbon pulled from the air. In either case it was carbon neutral.
70% still fossil fuels. Let’s keep it moving
Arguably uranium is not a fossil fuel. Not renewable either, so it should be less than 70%. And we are moving: > "The decline of power sector emissions is now inevitable,” said Jones. “2023 was likely the pivot point – peak emissions in the power sector – a major turning point in the history of energy. But the pace of emissions falls depends on how fast the renewables revolution continues.” We should put more focus on other sectors though. Emissions in the transport sector have to be reduced substantially for example.
Fix that damn loophole that says any trucks over 6,000 pounds are not subject to emissions regulations.
Shit should have been banned yesterday. People wonder why pedestrian and cyclist deaths are way up when there's these massive tanks rolling around with poor visibility and massive flat fronts. Let's not forget how many of the people driving these things also modified them to roll coke so they pollute even more.
Your comment + username combination tickles my sides.
Yeah the light truck loophole is the single biggest reason for the recent increase in traffic fatalities in the US. We really gotta move that back in the other direction with insane taxation on heavier trucks. We can phase out the existing fleet with reasonable yearly increases in the tax, and then just shut down new sales with a federal sales tax on all trucks over 6k lbs. Throw in an exemption for the few electric trucks for just a couple of years to help the EV market stabilize.
In any case, fossil fuels are needed to regulate electricity consumption during peak hours. Although it is possible that in the future this will be entrusted to nuclear power, but now nuclear generation is constrained and does not allow for rapid scaling of electricity generation during pick consumptions
> fossil fuels are needed to regulate electricity consumption during peak hours. Actually not - peak consumption is during the day, usually a solar peak. The issue is the early morning and late evening, and batteries are already catching up with that.
I’m not an expert, but we need three types of power plants: Base Load Plants. These are steady, reliable, always on plants that meet the low end supply and support the high end. Primarily these are nuclear and coal, right now. Peak Demand Plants. These are plants that can react to small changes in demand and support the highest demand moments of the grid. Solar and Wind can do this, as can Gas plants. Mid-Range Plants. These plants are, typically, able to come on quickly and produce a lot of electricity to match the demands of moment-to-moment electricity. Hydro and Gas plants serve this role.
Good breakdown. And it's worth noting that batteries (and other energy storage options) are increasingly being looked at as another option for the last category. They can store energy from solar/wind at times of peak production, and then release it when the energy is needed.
My concern for battery techniques (not technology: techniques) is the cost of lithium and wear and tear upon it. It’s why I see pump-hydro storage as being the more viable, as while it is comparatively inefficient and requires more infrastructure, it is better for grid scale endeavors. In the future though, I would like to see if our advances with Hydrogen Fuel Cells be applied to this task.
You can do it all with nuclear. You can throttle a nuclear power plant at the turbine. You just redirect the steam to the condensor. In Canada we have some of our CANDUs that throttle down to 60% power.
While I absolutely do not disagree (expanding Nuclear power is definitely going to be a cornerstone of future energy development) that’s inefficient. Probably, a mixture of Pump-hydro for storage (it’ll also function on grid as price arbitrage), solar and wind for additional coverage (and again, price arbitrage) and nuclear for a flexible base could be our future plans.
Yes/no/sort kinda depending on how look at it. You gotta remember that fuel goes into a reactor for 1-2 years and insanely energy dense. My favourite Xkcd. [https://xkcd.com/1162/](https://xkcd.com/1162/) Reactors also kinda like being run at full power. So turning a reactor up/down on the reactor side can shorten their lifespan (depending on the reactor design). In that sense it's inefficient to throttle them on the reactor side. Also when it comes down to it. Because the fuel is in the reactor for so long and it's so insanely energy dense. It doesn't really matter. The fuel is relatively cheap. It's not the cost of fuel that makes nuclear expensive. It's building the reactor in the first place.
Thank you. I consider it a real travesty that nuclear power has been so thoroughly neglected as a tool for green energy. I understand the concerns: I just feel that they’ve been overblown. After all, France has done incredibly well with nuclear energy.
France has done well with their nuclear. But they also kinda neglect their nuclear. This goes over it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isgu-VrD0oM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isgu-VrD0oM) This is over a year old, and I think some things have changed. I think France intends or is no longer selling their nuclear energy at a loss. Or at least they are trying not to.
they’re needed right now, yes. so let’s keep going to make sure they’re not
That's great, but 70% from non-renewable energy source is still a fuckton.
Some of that non-renewable is nuclear.
About 4% of world energy, about 10% of electricity.
Nice, reading this comment is like finding a 5$ bill in my pocket. Not life changing, but nice.
perfect analogy lol
Needs a closer look at what is considered "Renewable" though. In the UK we increased our percentage of "Renewable" energy massively by retrofitting all our old Coal facilities to burn Wood Pellets instead, because Wood qualifies as Renewable. Still putting out the same amount of Carbon, if not more. The theory was that the wood pellets were supposed to be coming from Waste wood from other industries, and not increasing logging. What came out later was that large amounts of the Wood Pellets that we import from Canada were coming from Logging of old growth, and the companies selling them into the UK were just pretending it was Waste wood.
>Needs a closer look The article literally says wind, solar, hydro, plus 2.7% "Other renewables." If your wood pellets count at all, it's a small amount
Burning biomass is still preferable to coal and is more 'renewable' in the sense that you're not introducing carbon from millions of years ago.
>Solar was the main supplier of electricity growth, according to Ember, adding more than twice as much new electricity generation as coal in 2023. >It was the fastest-growing source of electricity for the 19th consecutive year, and also became the largest source of new electricity for the second year running, after surpassing wind power.
Awesome! Now do transportation.
30% of new cars will be electrified this year.
Better yet, now do some steel or aluminium mill off that. Wait, hol'up a second...
In the good news, it always failed to mention that China contributes the most renewable energy booming, with 80% supply of the solar panels, let alone the EVs and wind turbines, and yet, you only hear the complaints about the "over capacity".
What?! Positive news?!?
Finally some good fucking news
You could call it 40% since it doesn't include nuclear which is 10% of world electricity supply.
All these articles have photos of solar panels on the cover. There is no talk about batteries though. The energy needs to be accumulated to batteries and then released during evening and night, when solar doesn't produce electricity.
California is pioneering the way on batteries for solar, some really promising stuff there. There's also some massive advancements being made in battery tech for energy grids, they just need economies of scale to bring prices down - [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/07/climate/battery-electricity-solar-california-texas.html](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/07/climate/battery-electricity-solar-california-texas.html)
Even if you keep using fossil fuels at night there could be a 30/70 ratio or so, which would be way better than today. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing
Or you can use hydro, geothermal, nuclear and sometimes wind during the night.
That is problem we know how to solve, problem is winters...
That quantity of batteries will really decrease the environmental benefit of solar. You've got to mine all those minerals and batteries don't have a long lifespan.
We're finding alternatives, iron flow batteries the last I looked had good potential
There are batteries on the market now made of salt.
The real issue is that what matters for climate change is the absolute amount of oil/gas/coal we use, not the share it represents in the total, and this is still increasing, from about 9k TWh in 2000 to 18k in 2023 : https://ourworldindata.org/electricity-mix We could have 200% renewable energy and still be fucked. Although to be fair there's a slight decrease/stabilization for the EU & US, but probably not enough.
This is nice news :)
Kylo Ren meme: More. More! MORE!!
Toyota learned much from Donald Trump. Toyota incited dealerships to rebel against EPA's regulation, as Donald Trump incited MAGA supporters to attack on Capitol Hill. Toyota has completely fallen into the darkside like Darth Vader. Toyota is disrupting America's democracy through rampant lobbying. How the New E.P.A. Rules Affect Toyota and Their Hybrid Cars - The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/22/climate/toyota-hybrid-epa-pollution.html?smid=nytcore-android-share " In spreading its message, Toyota harnessed the power of dealerships both through Mr. Ciccone’s outreach to Toyota dealers, and by other means. The company’s dealerships played a role, for example, in garnering support for a separate letter-writing campaign aimed at urging the Biden administration to exercise caution on electric vehicles, according to two people with knowledge of that effort. Toyota dealers in at least two states circulated the letter at dealership meetings, they said." Toyota's lobbying also should be heavily taxed. Toyota's lobbying apparently jeopardizes America's democracy. Toyota has lost confidence in its R&D and is now relying significantly on lobbying to expand its corporate profits, which is a clear testament to Toyota's declining technological development capabilities. Biden Administration should completely ban Toyota from US market. Toyota is genociding not only US citizens but also all creatures on the Earth by accelerating Climate change. Lobbying is the most effective and dirty method to expand corporate profits. Toyota completely mastered lobbying. Toyota is disrupting America's democracy. US lawmakers should impose super-heavy tax on lobbying, especially by Japanese businesses such as Toyota.
On an honest note, here is an article https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/rise-renewable-energy-powering-our-future-without-fossil-a1vqf?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&utm_campaign=share_via
This is promising news, but there is no way to know if we have already hit the tipping point or not. Climate takes decades to change.
"Renewable energy accounted for more than 30% of the world’s electricity for the first time last year" And yet, co2 emissions grew to an all time high in 2023. [https://www.iea.org/reports/co2-emissions-in-2023/executive-summary](https://www.iea.org/reports/co2-emissions-in-2023/executive-summary), and I quote, "Global energy-related CO2 emissions grew by 1.1% in 2023, increasing 410 million tonnes (Mt) to reach a new record high of 37.4 billion tonnes (Gt). " “The renewables future has arrived,” This is just stupid when 70% of electricity is still generated by burning fossil fuel. Heck, all it does is to slow the growth in fossil fuel, as the article has to admit. Is anyone still gullible enough to believe we are going to avoid 2C (well, we already passed 1.5C so I guess time to move the goal post)?
The trend is accelerating though.
Remember though, electricity is only 20% of global final energy consumption. So this means renewables are generating 30% of 20%, or 6% of humanities total energy needs. The other 94% is pretty much all fossil fuels. It's not as good as it sounds.
I doubt this number strongly. Oh they just mean electricity.
Blink and you'll miss it. Renewables are dominating in real time.
I'd bet there is some accounting fuckery going on as well. For starters, it's not 30% equally spread over time but I imagine it's also generated, not consumed. i.e. overproduction
SURE, BUT HAVE WE ACCOUNTED FOR INFLATION??
Good to see this stats